


Kiss Me Again

by Gemmiel



Series: Holding On [6]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M, bj/hawkeye, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 05:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3925093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemmiel/pseuds/Gemmiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Still filling in holes in this series, so here's another new installment.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Kiss Me Again

**Author's Note:**

> Still filling in holes in this series, so here's another new installment.

Kissing, BJ decides at last, isn't that big a deal.

It's not like he's _cheating_ on Peg, after all. Not really. He just shared a couple of kisses with someone. A kiss is just a kiss, as Hawkeye said. He's under terrible stress here, overworked and scared and hungry, and it's only natural that he sought out some comfort. He's sure Peggy would understand that, and forgive him.

Even so, he wants to confess everything to his wife, but a dozen half-written letters have wound up in the stove, burned to ashes. He can't tell her what he feels, what he's going through, not really. She might understand a stolen kiss or two-- but with a man? Deep down, he knows she wouldn't forgive that.

It's cold as hell-- the first truly cold night he's experienced here in Korea-- and he's sitting on a hard bench in the mess tent, shivering, waiting for some twenty-year-old B movie to start. He's wearing an Army-issue coat, but it doesn't seem to do much to warm him up, any more than the fire in the small stove halfway across the tent does. Glancing around at the sparse crowd, he sees that the veterans of a previous winter brought blankets and are huddling together beneath them. He thinks about going back to the Swamp and getting a blanket for himself, but the idea of going out in the bitter chill again makes him shiver more.

"Hey, Beej. See if this helps."

At the sound of Hawkeye's voice, his head jerks up and his heartbeat accelerates. Hawkeye is folding his long, lanky form into the space next to BJ. There's a dark olive blanket over his shoulders, and when he sits down he extends half of it to BJ. The blanket is tattered and frayed, but enormous, and BJ curls into its warmth gratefully and presses up next to Hawkeye, who's much warmer than the distant stove. Beneath the blanket, where no one can see, Hawkeye puts his arm around BJ and pulls him closer.

This is nice, BJ thinks as the movie starts. Almost like home, really, if you ignore the hard wooden benches and the intense cold and the fact that the film breaks four times in the first fifteen minutes. Despite all that, there's a certain normalcy about watching a movie with someone, a comforting sense of the ordinary in the warm body next to his. Back home in his bachelor days, he snuggled up to young ladies in the darkness of a movie theater many times. 

Of course, snuggling with Hawkeye isn't exactly like snuggling with a girl. Where women are soft and yielding, Hawkeye is all hard angles and bony shoulders and awkward, too-long limbs. But his arm around BJ's waist is strong and comforting, and BJ lets himself enjoy it.

After half an hour or so, he even gets up the nerve to slide his own arm around Hawkeye's waist, too. It's dark in the mess tent, and under the enveloping blanket there's little chance anyone will see. And even if they did, they're just two guys huddling together for warmth.

Hawkeye is an endless font of snide comments on the movie-- poking fun at the melodramatic acting, the sets that look like they could topple over at any moment, the ridiculously overwrought music-- and BJ finds himself enjoying Hawk's commentary far more than the movie itself. By halfway through the picture, he's giggling like a fourteen-year-old, laughing wholeheartedly for maybe the first time since he came to this gray place, and that only makes him adore Hawkeye the more.

When the movie finally ends (after an impressive final tally of nine breaks in the brittle antique film), they let go of one another and rise to their feet, the blanket still clutched around their shoulders. As they emerge into the dark night with the crowd, the cold air hits them in the face like a physical blow.

"Damn," Hawkeye says, wincing. "Didn't realize they'd reassigned us to Antarctica."

BJ cringes, and tries to pull his half of the blanket around himself more tightly. The crowd eddies away, toward their own tents, most of which are in the opposite direction from the Swamp. "Is it always like this in the winter?"

"This is nothing," Hawkeye says, obviously trying to sound cheerful about it. "Wait till it starts snowing."

BJ groans.

"I went through almost all of last winter with a hole in the sole of one boot," Hawkeye goes on, still forcing cheer. "Couldn't get supply to send me a new pair. You haven't lived through a Korean winter till you've walked around for months with snow in your boots."

"I hope my boots'll last the winter."

"You could always use coffins instead," Hawkeye says, and dodges BJ's good-natured smack. "I mean, come on, Beej, your feet are the size of-- oh, God, that's _cold!_ "

A gust of wind whirls down between the row of tents, all but bowling them over backward, and BJ is instantly ten times colder. Hawkeye drags him into a narrow little alley between tents, away from the main thoroughfare. A moment later they're up against a metal wall, and BJ realizes they're between the back of Supply and the rear of someone's tent, protected from the worst of the wind. It's still damn cold, though, and BJ is shivering worse than ever.

"I hate this place," he announces.

"You're only now realizing this?" Hawkeye pulls BJ against him. BJ looks around reflexively, but they're more or less concealed from view, and the camp sounds deserted. The thin crowd in the mess tent has already darted to their tents, and the sentry is probably warming his hands over a fire somewhere, if he's got any sense at all. It's cold and dark... and alone.

Hawkeye is humming a tune under his breath, as he's prone to doing. BJ vaguely recognizes it as a song that starts out with a line about the summer breeze and stars shining above. Well, the stars _are_ shining, glittering brilliantly against the inky sky, but that's very definitely not a summer breeze whistling through the camp. 

But then Hawkeye gets to the chorus, and BJ gets it when the other man sings, very softly, "Kiss me again..."

Hawkeye's long, lean body is warm against his, and BJ presses against him as if Hawk is the only heat source in all of Korea. He buries his face in Hawkeye's neck, breathing in the scent of him. Hawk smells like pine needles-- he must be using some soap from home, because Army-issue soap has a harsh, unpleasant odor-- and BJ breathes in deep gulps, wanting to memorize the way he smells, the way he feels. He rubs his cheek against the bristly jawline, which Hawkeye almost never bothers to shave in a timely manner, and the surprising smoothness of his throat. He can feel Hawk's pulse beating rapidly beneath the skin, and knows that his own heart is pounding just as hard.

Hawkeye's humming fades away as he presses light kisses into his hair, and BJ melts against him further. Kissing, his mind reminds him, is not a big deal. At least not _that_ big a deal. Peggy would understand.

He knows he's lying to himself, but in this moment, surrounded by a warm cocoon of blanket and Hawkeye, he doesn't care all that much. This is what he wants more than anything else in the world.

Hawkeye is kissing his forehead now, and he feels himself shiver, and doesn't know if it's from the cold or from the sensation of Hawk's lips moving over his skin. He can't help kissing Hawkeye in response, brushing his lips over the fragile skin of his throat. Hawkeye jolts in surprise or pleasure, BJ isn't sure which, and Hawk's grip around his waist tightens further.

BJ's lips move up, finding Hawkeye's jaw, the sensitive spot beneath his ear, and Hawkeye quivers with every touch of his lips and whimpers softly, like BJ's the world's greatest kisser. He knows he's not, that Hawkeye, the Casanova of Korea, has kissed so many more people than he himself has, but the idea that he can reduce Hawk to shivers and helpless little moans lights a fire deep in his belly. Peg never responded like this. She was always ladylike and restrained in bed, and he never had the slightest idea if he was pleasing her or not. Which probably meant he wasn't.

He doesn't blame Peg, but his own inexperience. He knows his touch must have been hamhanded and awkward at first, practically virginal as he'd been on their wedding night, and without any feedback he'd never had a lot of hope of improvement. But Hawkeye moans soft encouragement when he finds a sensitive spot, shudders when BJ flicks his tongue out experimentally and licks at his neck, and responds with kisses of his own, kissing BJ's cheek and ear and every other spot he can reach.

It's so different from kissing passive, quiet Peg. Hawkeye is the absolute furthest thing from passive and quiet.

Hawkeye, he reflects, is a noisy person in general. His laugh is a raucous cackle, his sneezes are nearly forceful enough to collapse the canvas walls of the Swamp, and his snores are outright terrifying. So it figures that he'd be loud about this, too. BJ can sense him trying to keep himself in check, to strangle his natural impulses toward loud and happy noises, but there's still no doubt that Hawk is enjoying himself immensely.

They're kissing each other's cheeks now, and from there it's easy enough to turn their heads slightly, so that their mouths meet. BJ sucks in a breath at the first touch of Hawk's lips against his, and Hawkeye makes a plaintive little moaning sound, and then they're kissing, so deeply and passionately that BJ's head whirls. He hasn't ever been kissed like this before. Hawkeye is so focused, so intense, that it makes BJ feel like he's the most desirable person on the planet.

He kisses Hawkeye back, offering everything he's got, everything he is, and for an endless moment, there's no Peggy, no guilt, no cold, no war. There's just the two of them, arms wrapped around each other and mouths locked together.

At last Hawkeye pushes him away, very gently. "We better get back to the Swamp," he says, "before they have to treat us for hypothermia." He's trying to sound light, but BJ can hear his voice shaking.

"Yeah," BJ agrees. "I guess we better."

They step reluctantly away from the protection of the metal wall, wrap the blanket securely around their shoulders, and make a run for it. When they dive into the Swamp, accompanied by a blast of frigid air, their tentmate Frank Burns whimpers in his sleep and pulls his blanket over his head. BJ mutters a hasty goodnight to Hawkeye, stumbles to his own cot, strips off his coat and his boots, and buries himself beneath an inadequate pile of blankets.

It's still bone-achingly cold. BJ lies there in the dark, shivering, and relives kissing Hawkeye, over and over again. He envisions pressing his lips to Hawk's throat, his cheek, his mouth, and slowly, his shivers die away and a comfortable heat blossoms deep inside him.

Despite the winter wind whistling around the tent, he feels very warm indeed.


End file.
